Game #1332: Wolfenstein 2 - The New Colossus

 Weird science.

 The Wolfenstein remake was pretty darn good, so of course a sequel was coming, enter Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.

 It picks up immediately after the previous game, with Blascovitch on his death bed... only to be rescued at the last minute, albeit left badly crippled, but don't worry, he gets better. The story follows the two timelines gimmick from the previous game, and you can pick whichever timeline you preferred, which nets you a different NPC ally as well as a unique weapon on each.

 The story, boy, the story is such a weird mess. How can you make a game about killing nazis overly woke? No, really, they... it's a mess. Now William, suddenly, is the son of a racist that beat him up for kissing a black girl even though... he married a jewish woman. And y'know, William's past is bleak, really bleak, but his father is such obvious pandering to the people that think they are fighting racism that it took me off the game. He even uses the N word. And then there are lines in which William has to say "WHITE" nazies. I mean... of course they are and were white? Why? Because pandering. You've got this badass black woman leader but she's so incredibly unlikeable, she smokes next to her baby and has the most abrasive personality they could get her. To the point that you feel glad when another character grabs her by the throat, she even calls another character 'white boy', dismissively, a few times. Insufferable. They also added Engel's daughter, and she's fat, and much like William, she's also victim to her mother's upbringing, but this parallel goes absolutely nowhere. The character herself is a bit of a walking fat joke, which is off-putting since they went after a woke tone for the plot.

 And leaving that aside, since not everyone will cringe from the overtly woke tone, then there's how the game wants you to take the plot seriously... but then has all these idiotic jokes in it. Engel's daughter, Sigrun's plight is sometimes portrayed in a way that it seems as if they want you to laugh at her? Which is incredible, since she gets the most interesting character arc, growing out of the nazi mindset she was forced into. Then there's William's wife, who is now pregnant, going into bullet-fights while pregnant. How does that make any sense? She is a liability. She is carrying children in her womb. It makes absolutely no sense. Then there's another character who happens to be dropping acid all the time, and I'm supposed to believe he survives every time he makes it out of the base? Don't even let me get started on the cringe party scene. While the previous entry also had a bit of humor that didn't gel very well with the new serious tone.... it wasn't THIS bad. And the subtitles disappear or go out of sync every now and then, so you can't even trust those.

 And then there's the gameplay.... I'll get the best thing about it out of the way first, the new dual wielding mechanic is glorious. You can have Will carry any weapon on either hand, so you can go guns akimbo in all sorts of ways, like having a shotgun on the left hand and the assault rifle on the right one. It's amazing, and it's such a small little addition, but it works so well. That said... the game is brutal. It doesn't even feel fair, throughout the first 2/3rds of the game your total life points cap at 50 instead of 100, you get murdered in SECONDS and the HP and Armor upgrades from the first game are nowhere to be seen, compounding with this is how worthless the damage indicator is, quite a few times you'll only realize you are taking damage if you notice the HP going down.

 Most of the game I was left frustrated than anything else, fighting spongy enemies that can take what feels way more punishment that I could deal. It was not a fun experience. And the story was such a mess too... I don't know what happened with this one, considering the previous games were so great.

 4.0